During the summer of 1793, Mattie Cook lives above the family coffee shop with her widowed mother and grandfather. Mattie spends her days avoiding chores and making plans to turn the family business into the finest Philadelphia has ever seen. But then the fever breaks out.

Disease sweeps the streets, destroying everything in its path and turning Mattie's world upside down. At her feverish m...
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This "brilliantly told" (New York Times) Newbery Honor Book gives readers a sense of what it was like to be on the American home front while our soldiers were away fighting in World War II.

As in past years, Lily will spend the summer in Rockaway, in her family's summer house by the Atlantic Ocean. But this summer of 1944, World War II has changed everyone's life. Lily's best friend, Margaret, has moved to a wartime factory town, and, much worse, Lily's father is going overseas to the war.

There's no one Lily's age in Rockaway until the arrival of Albert, a refugee f...
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...when people traveled by trolley car, street lamps were lit by a lamplighter each night, and most clothes were sewn at home. The world was growing up. And so is Anna, who struggles to learn math, longs for a new red coat, falls from her roller skates, and takes a marvelous ride.

Set in Baltimore just before World War I and based on the girlhood of the author's own mother, Anna's story reveals that growing up is complicated, no matter when you do it.
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